Stop Hunts - aka How institutions fill their HUGE limit orders

Imagine that you work for a big hedge fund firm and have been given the task of selling your firm's entire 10,000 BTC holdings at the highest possible price due to forecasted macroeconomic uncertainty. The chart, when viewed on a daily timeframe, looks like this:

BTC on a daily timeframe

You can do it here but by clicking the big red SELL button and immediately executing a HUGE market order... By doing so you are very likely to paint a red dildo and suffer a huge slippage. Thus selling btc at a lower than optimal price.

... So instead of apeing in... you come up with a devious plan. You realize price is in a range for some time, hence, above the previous high (where a lot of people sold before) there are a bunch of protective stops. Those stops are nothing more than resting market BUY orders.... What if I buy some more BTC just enough so that I trigger those juicy stops. Those poor souls will buy BTC in order to cut losses on their early shorts or too high leverage.

... And so as the market pumps buy stops get triggered, joining them are FOMO retailers and breakout traders who further buy into your bags. If the your bags are big enough the price reverses. The downside movement is now triggering SELL stops of the breakout buyers at the top .. driving the price even further down. Red dildos create panic among retail and further fuel the sellings.

Manipulation scenario unfolding

Your boss congratulates you as you've unloaded your BTC bag for a maximum possible price of 69.000

These things occur EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. It's a giant PvP arena where big boys eat retail. It is vicious.

Below are some additional examples of the same pattern. I hope you enjoy :)

May 2021 top

And some more recent examples of the BUY mode.

Jan 11 2023

Jan 12 2023 same thing.

Disclaimer #1: Breakout trades do work sometimes especially in trending market but bear in mind. Prices range 80% of the time and impulse only 20% of the time... so by default they are at disadvantage.

Disclaimer #2: This whole post does not mean Stop losses are bad, they are a must when trading, you just have to be careful where and when you're placing them.